


Motorcycles

by karikes



Series: Suburbia [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Getting Together, Gratuitous In-N-Out Reference, Motorcycles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 10:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17139935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karikes/pseuds/karikes
Summary: Leonard meets Nyota. He then proceeds to spend his every waking hour trying to get her to top him. She doesn’t appear to be averse to the idea.I’m joking. Or am I? Either way: less heterosexual nonsense, more motorcycles.





	Motorcycles

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello. It’s been awhile! If you’re new here: This is the first fic chronologically, but I personally feel like you’ll be totally fine reading them in publication order if that’s a thing you’d like to do, seeing as I wrote them in that order. If you’re not new here: Thanks for coming back after a year and a half. I appreciate you.
> 
> This is by far the longest, most plot-intense, and emotionally heavy installation in the series. Mostly that the first two (last two? I have no clue why I decided to write this series backwards) were really light-hearted and slice of life fics, and this one has an actual timeline with an actual point to it and my personal headcanons lean towards angst for Bones so: Warning for brief mention of alcoholism, the usual raunchiness (This entire series should probably be rated M but I am so bad at knowing the exact line y’all. I really do try, I promise), and a slightly less brief mention of emotional abuse, but not the majority of the fic, that’s for sure. However, this is not a doom and gloom fic by any stretch of the imagination.
> 
> Oh and I could not be bothered to do research on anything, but who cares! This series is hardly the most well-researched thing I’ve ever written (or the best thing I’ve ever written either). The timeline should match up alright with what I talked about in Minivans, though. 
> 
> I’d like to say thank you to [LieutenantSaavik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik) for their help with a sticking point!! And now go. Read. Be free from this long author’s note.

It goes like this:

Leonard works with a lot of women as a pediatric nurse, so it’s not a surprise that his female coworker (Jennifer) introduces her female friend (Gaila) one evening. Gaila brought Jennifer coffee and a hug, apparently, and also decides to befriend Leonard in the same visit.

“She does this,” Jennifer says, in that knowing tone of voice all women have.

“Okay,” Leonard replied, and allowed himself to be invited to a friendsgiving thing at Gaila’s house in a week. She has two roommates, but they’re both fine with it, so it’s chill. At least, that’s his understanding from the endless string of words coming from Gaila’s mouth. She’s very… energetic.

“Bring a side dish!” She yells, backing out of the ward. “Get my number from Jennifer and text me what you want to bring and I’ll make sure we only get doubles of the stuff we need doubles of!”

Leonard nods, feeling as though he’s been manhandled without once being touched. “Uh,” he says, turning to Jennifer. “She’s just that friendly?”

“Yup. She’ll let you know if she wants to fuck you.” 

His face feels a little tight at that. He’s an adult, but sometimes the blatant sex life talk throws him for a loop. He’s private about that, and there’s a reason any and all hickeys received remain underneath the protection of his scrubs.

“Well,” he starts, but Jennifer interjects.

“If you tell her you’re uncomfortable, she’ll back off, but she is one of those people that’s naturally flirty and attracted to a lot of people. Respectful, but out there.”

“Thank you,” Leonard says, then goes to hunt down some coffee for himself. He’s not really interested in having any kind of extended conversation with Jennifer at this exact moment in time. And the night shift is only so fun when you work it regularly, and he does not. He does pick it up just enough that his sleep schedule tends more towards fucked than normal, but that’s what being single with no animals or friends outside of work will get you. 

*

He gets Gaila’s number, and settles on bringing cranberry sauce, because that’s easy and no one else is bringing it yet. He wouldn’t normally do this kind of thing, but his last Thanksgiving was spent staring at a wall, really fucking alone. Not like the first one after Joss, but definitely not great.

He’s making an effort to be his own person, and do better for himself, now that his high school sweetheart decided to be someone other than the person he thought he married. He deserves better, he knows. He never realized how bitter and awful he was when he was around her. He never realized how bitter and awful  _ she _ was until the end. µAnd sure, Leonard is kind of cynical and sarcastic, but not- not like that. He’s starting to be glad Joss forced the end of their marriage.

He’ll go to this friendsgiving, meet some new people, and have a better time than if he were alone, even if he has to work later in the afternoon. He’s decided it, and he’s going to make it happen. 

He’s still a little apprehensive when he rings the doorbell at the address Gaila gave him, but he’s flat out tongue-tied when the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen opens the door. He thinks that- that she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen- without a second of hesitation. Alright then.

“Hi,” she says, a bit of a smile on her lips. “I’m Nyota.” Her eyes drop to the cranberry sauce he’s holding. She’s wearing a simple black shirt and flowy blue pants. Her skin is the color of walnut, luminous and warm. Her eyes are a deeper shade of brown, and her smile is even warmer. “You must be Leonard, with the cranberry sauce. Come on in.”

Leonard is inside, has set the cranberry sauce down on the side table, said hi to a couple other random people milling around, and has toed off his shoes before he finds his voice again. 

“Hi,” he says, awkwardly late. “I  _ am _ Leonard, and the only person I vaguely know here is Gaila.”

Nyota nods knowingly, her ponytail bobbing. “She’s like that. I promise she’s a great friend once you actually get to know her. Up at all hours because she runs on some inhumane amount of sleep all the time, incredibly hard-working, and somehow still has time and energy to befriend a hundred people.”

Leonard is pretty sure he’s going to either pass out or ask her out on a date by the end of the night. If she’s single, that is. This is the day of doing slightly uncomfortable things for his well being, after all.

“Yeah,” he replies, instead of the date thing, or passing out. He doesn’t know exactly how, but he does it. “I met her at two am when she brought my coworker coffee. That’s when she invited me to this thing.”

“Sounds like Gaila.”

“Is she here somewhere?” Leonard asks, figuring he should greet her as a matter of politeness, if nothing else.

“Nope.” Nyota shakes her head a little. “She went with our other roommate to get wine. Apparently she thought we had more than we did.”

He shrugs. “I don’t drink much these days, so it’s fine by me.”

“Gaila has magic alcohol powers,” she says. “I once drank a bottle of wine with her after finals weekend, and she woke up the next morning without a hangover, at six am.”

Leonard winces. “Is that physically possible?”

“Apparently.” Nyota shrugs. 

He’s currently trying to figure out the politest possible way to: 1. Ask Nyota to marry him as soon as possible, fuck the bitterness from Joss trying to poison an institution he values. 2. Get her to fuck him into his mattress ASAP, like sooner than marrying, if that’s a thing she happens to be into, and 3. Get her to call him Len.

The last one is probably the easiest, all things considered. 

“Anyways,” he says, “You should call me Len.”

“Not Leo?” Nyota asks. Then, “I’m joking, I know how Southern nicknames work.”

“Are you from the south?” Leonard asks. He doesn’t think so- there’s nothing to suggest it, but he’s curious.

“No. My mother is, though. I also have an interest in languages.”

So: beautiful, well-rounded, nice. He is winding up to get himself fucked over. But it doesn’t really matter right now. He’s purposefully not being miserable and alone right now. He’s curious, and she’s willing. “Oh?” 

“Yes,” she says. “My dad is from Kenya, and he really wanted me and my siblings to learn Swahili. I’m the only one fluent out of us, but I’m also fluent in three other languages, so my dad isn’t too frustrated by their lack of linguistic ability.”

“Neat,” Leonard says, and wishes desperately he’d grabbed a class of water or soda or something so he didn’t feel like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Years of being an adult, and he’s still not very good at it. He’s not sure he’s ever going to be.

“So what do you do that has you up at two am?” Nyota leans against the counter, apparently interested in maintaining conversation with him.

He has no clue why, but he’ll bite. “Pediatric nurse. I work the night shift a lot, because I don’t have family and I like the quiet.”

Nyota raises her eyebrows. “You like kids?”

“Yup.” Leonard shrugs. “You have a problem with that?”

“It’s just unusual to meet a guy who’s a nurse, much less a pediatric one,” she replies. Her gaze narrows. “You had better not be stuck up about working a ‘woman’s job.’ I have no time for that bullshit.”

“If I tried to pull that shit, my coworkers would not be happy. And it’s plain wrong. I like what I do, I get paid well, and I get to help kids out. I promise I don’t have a superiority complex. Well, besides the normal one all nurses have. Doctors are worse, though, let me tell you.”

She seems happy to listen to his complaints about stuck up doctors until Gaila appears and the meal starts.

They don’t really see each other much after that, what with there being a lot of people, but Leonard has a fascinating discussion about working in local government with the people next to him. Gaila apparently knows them because she volunteers with them in her spare time? He thinks?

But he still sees Nyota again when Gaila insists on dragging him out to a movie. She neglected to mention Nyota was going to be there, so Leonard feels suddenly self-conscious about his helmet hair and if he has any marks on his face and-

“You ride?” is the first thing out of her mouth.

“Yeah,” Leonard says eloquently. He scratches the back of his head with his free hand. “My ex thought motorcycles were for cocky assholes, but I’ve always liked them. After the divorce and moving out here and everything, I figured why the hell not, you know?” He shrugs, wondering if he’s come across as casually as he was hoping to. Probably not. Nyota’s gaze is sharp, and she’s definitely not an idiot.

“Cool,” she says, then flips her ponytail over her shoulder. “Did you see the trailer, or is this an attempt to be social in the monotony of being an adult?”

Leonard chokes a little on his spit, but gathers himself as they actually walk inside. “Um, the latter.”

“Same,” she says. “It’s probably going to be terrible.”

The movie  _ is _ terrible, but it’s one of those so bad it’s good kind of things, and he laughs enough he doesn’t feel like his money was wasted. 

When they’re back in the parking garage, Nyota says something to Gaila quietly, cracks a grin, then turns to Leonard. “We should go on a ride sometime,” she says, her smile returning in full force. 

“Like on my bike?” He asks, feeling kind of dumb at the thought of her tiny hands wrapped around his chest. 

“I have my own,” she says. “Good gas mileage for a grad student’s budget. Easy to park in the city, you know how it is.”

“Yeah,” Leonard replies, attempting to pay attention to what she’s saying and not the way her face looks when she smiles. “That’d be cool. We definitely should.”

He discovers later that she meant a ride on  _ her _ bike, not a ride on their separate bikes together. 

Nyota in leathers is  _ something. _ What exactly she is, he can’t say, because he’s currently lost all higher brain function. He fumbles his own helmet on and climbs on her bike behind her somehow. She might say something. He isn’t sure. He knows nothing except how fucking hot she looks right now. And the feeling of her waist in his hands, her whole torso pressed against his, and the wind whipping around them. It’s pretty fucking incredible.

“Oh my god,” he gasps, practically tearing his helmet off at a rest stop outside the city. “Holy fuck.”

Her grin is practically feral this time, her hair remarkably frizz free for being in a helmet for forty-five minutes, and her hands look absolutely perfect when she tugs her gloves off. Her nail polish is a light purple that perfectly compliments her skin tone. He literally wants to kiss her hand.

He isn’t entirely sure he’s ever been more attracted to anyone in his entire life.

“It’s a pretty sweet ride if I do say so myself,” she says, tipping her head at her bike. 

_ Please fuck me, _ Leonard thinks, and shuts his eyes tightly in an attempt to get himself under control.

“It really is,” he manages, and opens his eyes again. The wind is up, and his eyes sting a little with the force of it, but it’s better than saying something wildly inappropriate to a woman he considers his friend. She might be flirting with him a little bit- he certainly thinks she is, but there is a possibility she isn’t, and he does not want to be that asshole.

“We should take your bike out for a ride sometime,” she says. “If you want.”

“Sure thing,” he replies, then beats himself up for a minute and a half straight.  _ Sure thing. _ Old buddy, old pal. Goddamn, he is a mess.

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” she says, after a bit of silence. “When I come back, I’ll hold your stuff for you if you need?”

“Yeah, that would be great.”

Leonard spends the entire time Nyota is in the bathroom trying to figure out if he should come out and say it, or wait forever. Fuck. He is so fucked. So royally and completely fucked.

She comes back, and he pastes a smile on his face, tugging his own gloves off. “Be right back,” he says, and scrams.

He picks a stall and just stands there for three minutes, then slams his hand against the flimsy metal wall and opens the door again. The place is blessedly empty, but he runs his hands under the faucet for a few seconds to give the appearance of having used the bathroom for real.

“You ready to head back?” She asks as he approaches.

“Yeah,” he replies. There’s no better answer, really. 

It’s the same story on the ride home. He avoids any awkward situations by running through state capitals, then world capitals, and finally, counting the trees they pass by.

When they get back to Nyota and Gaila’s place (and Carol’s too, apparently, but Leonard hasn’t seen her since Thanksgiving), he attempts to figure out the best way to politely get out of there as fast as possible. 

“I’d better get going,” he says, and makes the apology face. 

“Oh?” Nyota says, unzipping her jacket as she walks up the garage steps. “You don’t want coffee or something?”

The truth is that he would like coffee very much, but he would also like to be naked with her three weeks ago so. “Not today, thank you.”

She raises an eyebrow and pulls her keys out of her pocket. “You, turning down coffee?”

“Yeah, well,” Leonard says, and scuffs his boot on the driveway a bit. 

She narrows her eyebrows this time, but says a polite “Goodbye then,” before going inside. 

*

He thinks he acquitted himself pretty well, except for the fact that Nyota shows up at his apartment when he’s about to leave for work three weeks later, after he’s pretty much said no in every possible polite way to say it to hang out (?) again. 

“You’ve been acting shifty,” she says, the second he opens his door. She squeezes past him into his entryway, not even waiting for an invitation in. “I want answers.”

“I’m about to leave for work,” Leonard says helplessly. Her shampoo is making him weak in the knees. Weak. In. The knees. 

“Well,” Nyota says. “I’m on track with my thesis right now, and you’re all dressed already. This shouldn’t take that long.”

“Um,” he says, panicking. He is a grown ass man. A grown ass man. He has befriended women, dated women, slept with women, and married a woman. Divorced one too, but that wasn’t his fault. He knows what to do around women. Nyota Uhura appears to break his “knowing what to do with women” meter. Just. Glass shattered, meter obliterated. Gone.

Her shampoo is affecting his ability to think. Fuck.

He stares at the ceiling and very carefully says, “I’m very attracted to you, but I don’t think you view me as anything except a friend, so yes, I was kind of shifty. I’m also trying to be fucking polite.” He lowers his gaze. Nyota’s face is absolutely implacable. “Now, I need to leave for work within the next eight minutes, or I’ll be late. Excuse me.”

*

Here’s the thing: There was a time before he was a grown ass man panicking in the entryway to his apartment.

In that time, Leonard is fifteen, and Jocelyn is sixteen. They’re five months apart, he’s pretty sure, if he’s got her birthday right. She’s the only person in Mr. Johnson’s algebra two class with a higher grade than him.

She has long red hair that’s the most gorgeous shade of auburn (He reads, okay. He’s a teenage boy, but he reads. He knows words like auburn, and how to use them, thank you very much. Not that he’s spreading that around, but it’s his own damn head. He’s allowed to think whatever the hell he likes) and eyelashes that shine golden against her pale skin. 

He thinks he’s in love.

It goes like this:

He pines for over a year. He’s resigned himself to the certain death that faces all teenagers the first time they believe themselves in love. Seriously, he’s being very stoic about it all. Jocelyn still has a higher grade than him in trig. He’s dealing with it, and doing better than her in AP bio, so he thinks it’s alright. He gets to stare at her a lot, anyways. 

And then she asks him to prom. 

They’ve hardly exchanged four words outside of class, and they’ve all been about math grades. Leonard gapes at her perfectly shaped bangs, her long ponytail full of her gorgeous hair, her perfectly shaped mouth, and says, “What the hell?”

“Do you want to go to prom with me?” Jocelyn repeats, sounding mostly bored but a little frustrated. 

He blinks a couple of times, then says, “So long as I don’t have homework, sure.” Which is just about the dumbest response he can make, having been  _ in love _ with her for some time now. Certainly longer than most teenagers are.

She laughs a little, then hands him a piece of paper with her number scrawled on it. “If my brother answers, feel free to tell him to fuck off.”

Leonard thinks the way her perfect mouth looks when she says “fuck” is going to kill him. Absolutely murder him.

It doesn’t, but his shower time increases. 

It goes like this:

He takes her to prom. He slow dances with her, and it’s only a little bit awkward for how sweaty his palms are. She feels him up just as much as he does her afterwards, but no clothes come off, and that’s fine.

Leonard is just going to die never having sex, because while he knows he’s kind of cute, he’s a giant nerd who spends every spare hour obsessing over how his transcript will look applying to colleges. Jocelyn asking him to prom, and letting him touch her breast does not equate to any kind of long term relationship. He knows this.

He also knows that he is sixteen and a half, and he hopes he’s going to marry her. 

It goes like this:

She asks to see him again.

They date, and when they go to different colleges, they keep dating. Leonard loses his virginity to her, and she continues to make him absolutely tongue-tied with everything she does. 

He thinks he’s in love with her, enough that he dares to buy a ring at twenty-one, and ask her over summer break. She thinks him choosing nursing over medical school is a “pansy move, Leonard,” and a “weak salary choice,” but he thinks he’s in love with her. He believes it enough to overlook the fact she doesn’t even try to understand that he wants to  _ help _ people on the most hands-on way possible. 

She says yes, and they get married before his face has lost all of its roundness, while her hair is still gleaming red, perfectly coiffed. Their wedding photos look like something out of a magazine, and their moms cry.

Their marriage lasts two perfect years before it all goes to shit.

Or that’s what Leonard thinks at first, before he realizes he was a goddamn fool, and never should have let his attraction to a strong, intelligent woman allow him to overlook her crueler tendencies.

It goes like this:

He goes to therapy in between his shifts as a pediatric nurse. He drinks a lot of coffee. He keeps a dart board at home in his tiny apartment so he won’t punch a hole in the wall when he thinks about how Jocelyn undermined him in every possible way, to the point where he almost didn’t graduate.

How the hell was he so blind? Was it her perfect goddamn hair? Her teasing “I’m better than you” attitude? Or the way she knew every single one of Leonard’s buttons and led him on until he wasn’t fun anymore?

He hopes her new boy toy deserves her.

He has to stop drinking for a few years.

It goes like this:

He moves to San Francisco. 

Leonard was so busy wrapped up in Jocelyn and school, he never had time to find himself. His therapist recommends a big change, something he’s always wanted to do.

A big city is a big change from rural Georgia, but also he does something he’s been wanting to for a long time: He kisses a guy. 

Well, he kissed Johnny Manly once, and then freaked out so badly about it he decided fixating on Jocelyn was much better, and allowed her to consume everything. He probably feels even better about properly kissing a guy because he knows Joss would be absolutely livid that he’s attracted to not just other women besides her, but also  _ men. _

He kisses some more men and some women too, and helps kids with broken legs to the bathroom, and he drinks a little again, and he thinks he’s enjoying himself for the first time in his life. (Not that the kids with cancer thing is good, but that he can help them.)

And then he meets Nyota. And right now he a grown ass man panicking in the entryway to his apartment because he met her and he really likes her, is super attracted to her, and totally thought about marrying her the day he met her even though he  _ knows _ it’s a stupid thought to have.

She’s staring at him right now, face totally and completely blank. She blinks. He notices how perfect her eyeliner is. He thinks about how he is totally and irrefutably going to be late for work no matter how much longer she’s in his apartment because he is going to freak out in the parking garage and/or bathroom no matter what.

She opens her mouth, then shuts it again. “Leonard,” she finally says. “That was a date. Me taking you for a ride on my bike was a date. I was not oblivious to the fact that you were into me. I was encouraging it.”

Leonard has absolutely nothing to say. He’s pretty sure he’s gaping at her like a fish. 

“We’re going out to lunch Saturday. I’ll text you,” Nyota says, then slaps his arm lightly. “Go to work now.”

“Okay,” he says, and goes.

He doesn’t have a breakdown in the parking garage and/or bathroom, nor does he misplace a single thing his entire shift. He’s pretty sure he’s in some kind of alternate universe where the universe has decided to stop fucking him over re: women. 

It goes like this: 

They go to lunch on Saturday.

After they’re seated, have their drinks, and are waiting on their food, she twirls her straw before taking a sip of her Arnold Palmer. 

“So,” she says. “We’re going to talk.”

“I figured,” he says, deadpan. 

“Well, I did contemplate sitting in silence, but I already do yoga, so it’s not really a priority when I’m on a date.”

Leonard grins in spite of himself. “Sounds like a plan.”

She clicks her tongue, but she’s smiling when she glances up at him. “Do you want to know what I told Gaila after our friendsgiving?”

“What?” he asks, not sure he wants to know this, or how it’s relevant, but Nyota is talking, so he’s listening. 

“I told her that she shouldn’t have brought such a pretty white man around when I was trying to focus on school. She laughed and said she’d take the blame. That probably means she’s never going to shut up about introducing us, but I love her enough I’ll put up with it.”

Leonard’s mouth feels very dry. He takes a sip of his (fucking awful) sweet tea (seriously, he doesn’t know why he keeps thinking non-Southerners know how to make it) and attempts to gather himself together.

“So what exactly does that mean related to dating me?” He asks, staring studiously at the table. He’s had a crush on her since he met her, literally. How could he not?

“It means that I like you enough to make time for you.” She’s smiling broadly when he looks up again. “But you’re dating a grad student, who doesn’t have a lot of spare money or time, so we’re going to get creative.”

“Uh,” he starts, then stops again. “You want to make this a serious thing?”

“You don’t?” The arch of Nyota’s eyebrow makes him- well. He’s in a public place.

“I do,” he gets out as quickly as possible. “I do, believe me.”

“Good,” she says.

“Good,” Leonard repeats, feeling a little stupid. 

“Moving on,” she says. “I’ve noticed you have a thing for my motorcycle.”

“Well,” he says weakly. He blushes and scrubs at the back of his neck. He stares at the fading tan on the back of his hands and doesn’t think about his long gone wedding ring tan for once. He’s too busy trying to figure out what exactly to say to that.

He thinks he’s saved by their food arriving, but he should have known better. Nyota is sharper than a tack. She’s a fucking sword or something. Leonard would probably die for her, if she asked. Is that entirely healthy? Who knows. He’s certainly not over analyzing it. He’s not that kind of medical professional, and he isn’t seeing his therapist for another week. He’ll probably feel a bit more balanced in a week’s time. Probably.

“You avoided answering me,” she says, her fork cutting through her slice of pizza. There are a lot of vegetables on it, which is not in his tastes, but he’s not eating it, so it doesn’t particularly bother him. 

Leonard clears his throat. “I mean, doesn’t everyone have a thing for women on motorcycles?”

“No,” she says firmly. “You turn eight shades of red every time you see me in my leathers. Which hasn’t been very many times, sure, but it’s definitely a thing.”

“Well,” he says, even more weakly than the first time. He pokes at his sandwich a little, then takes a bite big enough he’s forced to look away from her sharp gaze. Finally, he takes a deep breath and looks her in the eyes. He’s a grown ass adult. “I have a thing for badass women. Competent women. I like a woman who knows what she’s doing.”

“I can work with that,” Nyota says, then takes another bite. “So, was your ex-wife a CEO or something?”

Leonard laughs. “Joss worked in IT. We went to high school together, and she usually was the one person in math class to have a better grade than me.”

“I see,” she replies.

He has no doubts that she’s looking straight through him. He doesn’t know whether to be turned on or squirm. He thinks he’s settling somewhere more in the territory of turned on, though. All his cards on the table, and all that.

“Are you willing to put up with a grad student?” she asks. “I work a lot and when I have spare time I tend to spend it doing absolutely nothing that requires higher brain function.”

Leonard raises his glass. “You’re in good company in that regard, if you hadn’t noticed. Almost everyone I know still lives in Georgia, and I’ve been becoming a workaholic to replace my failed marriage. Not really, but sometimes it’s easier to pick up an extra shift than to think about all the stuff I talk about in therapy.”

“That’s understandable,” she says, and takes another vegetable-laden bite. Vegetables on  _ pizza. _ It’s a good thing he’s pretty much been smitten with her since they met. 

Okay, change of subject. “So, does this mean you don’t want to go out to fancy restaurants and stuff? Are we non-traditionally dating?”

She laughs. “I guess you could say that. I’m not saying we’ll never go out to eat, but I also am trying to save money here, so it’s not a top priority. We could go to movies, but also it’s cheaper to watch them at home. Not that I’m a cheapskate, but we grad students needs must be frugal.”

Leonard waves his hand. “I get it. This city is goddamn expensive, we’re all choking on our rent.”

“You can say that again,” she says. “Do you have a roommate?”

“No, but I probably should. I don’t know, it’s kind of nice to live on my own, having never done it before. I can technically afford it, and my therapist says it’s probably good for me if it’s not completely killing my budget.”

She nods. “I like that you have a therapist. I’ve gone a couple times over the years. It’s nice to just have someone to talk to sometimes, you know?”

“That I do,” Leonard says, and that is that.

They’re dating now, and it seems to be like another good decision in the list he’s been making since he moved away from home.

They do go out sometimes, even if it’s to In-N-Out or a matinee on the weekend. Nyota does insist on taking Leonard ice skating once, which is not exactly a disaster, but he definitely falls on his ass a lot while she skates circles around him. She took figure skating lessons for a couple years when she was younger, and ballet, and something else he can’t remember right now. It’s not like he’s a completely uncoordinated fool, it’s just that he grew up in Georgia and ice skating is not really a thing there. 

Nyota politely laughs only a little, and skates with him a lot slower than she’s capable so they can hold hands. It’s pretty great.

They hang out at the library sometimes too. Leonard will wander off in the stacks while Nyota gets set up with her laptop and works on her thesis. Once he’s got a stack of books, he’ll check them out and sit down next to her. He often works through at least one of the books by the time they leave, but there’s something comforting about the old smell of the library, his girlfriend tapping away at her laptop, and the comfort of a book. 

And then there are the times they sit in bed and read like an old married couple. That’s probably Leonard’s favorite way to spend time with her. She wears her glasses and has her hair up in a messy bun, and he’s wearing a college tee and old boxers and it’s really horrifically domestic. He loves it.

It’s good to not be alone anymore. He’s never particularly suffered with being lonely, what with three siblings, a high school girlfriend turned wife, and his coworkers, but he’s been  _ alone _ for some time now.

It was good, to be alone, to regain a sense of self outside of his marriage, to sleep around a bit and get a motorcycle and all those things. It’s also good to read next to Nyota in bed at nine pm, because they can and they’re tired adults. Sometimes he’ll put his book down before her and scoot down on the bed so his face is turned into her stomach and she’ll read to him. She reads a lot of poetry. She says she needs it to balance out all the math she does every day. Sometimes the poetry is in Swahili, or Dutch, or maybe English, but he just likes the sound of her voice and the warmth of her body.

He really, really likes her. Not just because she’s beautiful, but because she’s funny and smart, and can cook like eight things, and is so together it’s a little funny. And she also puts the toilet paper on the wrong way and insists that she is perfectly capable of grocery shopping even though she gets all the right stuff and the wrong brands every time she goes by herself.

And they might have kind of moved in together in the last couple of months.

He realizes it one Sunday evening, when she’s doing TA grading at his kitchen table and absently eating snack mix in her nightgown. 

“Nyota,” he says. “Did you move in with me without me noticing?”

She doesn’t look up, just marks something with her pen. “Yes. I have been paying rent.”

“Um.”

“Are you averse to our current situation?”

“Well, no, I just- I feel like it crept up on me. I’m happy. I like living with you. It’s just weird to realize that it happened without a conversation or anything.”

She pushes her glasses to the top of her head and actually looks at him this time, with her warm brown eyes and warm brown skin and lovely face.

“Leonard, I promise that for any future choices we make as a couple, we will have an official agreement.”

“Okay,” he says, and kisses her, because he loves her. 

He does, and he’s really not scared of that fact at all. Plus every single day with Nyota is better than his entire marriage with Joss. It’s a little scary to have something so good, but his therapist is enforcing the idea that he should embrace it. 

It feels better embracing a serious relationship in a city where people aren’t intimately aware of every personal detail possible about his life and watched him toddle around in diapers. That certainly helps. It also helps that he’s with a much kinder woman and has a significantly stronger sense of self. 

*

The subject of marriage is brought up in their relationship, as are kids, and finances, and the usual stuff. They’re grown adults, and neither of them are particularly looking to fuck around. Leonard’s actually pretty sure Nyota’s never fucked around about a single thing in her life, she’s so driven, but the point is: they’re pretty much on the same page.

But Nyota brings the subject of marriage up again a couple of weeks before she’s defending her thesis. Which is a little weird, if Leonard’s completely honest about it. Like, there’s no reason to be talking about marriage exactly at that point in time.

She’s editing, and has been since three pm. It’s now midnight, and he’s supplying coffee and company, and then going to work in two hours to pick up the last half of Monica’s shift. 

“Hey Len,” she says, not looking up from her laptop. “You want to get married again someday, right?”

He squints at her, then drinks the last swallow of coffee in his mug. “Yes. We’ve talked about it before.”

“I thought so, my brain’s just been fried lately.”

Okay then. Leonard shrugs and puts it out of his mind.

He really shouldn’t have, all things considered, but Nyota is getting a job at NASA in the South Bay lined up, and then defending her thesis, and then graduating and getting her  _ doctorate _ and Leonard has work on top of all the things happening in his girlfriend’s life, so it’s a wash, all things considered. 

He watches her walk, and receive her diploma case, looking fabulous in that hideous robe, and then he kisses her quickly afterwards and rushes home to shower before work. 

He’s halfway through what’s shaping up to be a brutal shift, with not one, not two, but three patients with some kind of stomach flu, which means he’s cleaning up a lot of vomit. From children who can’t always make it in the provided receptacle. 

It’s a real joy. He’s pretty sure there’s vomit in his shoe, but his shift doesn’t end for another four and a half hours, so who knows! Not him, that’s for sure!

Leonard has just sat down at the nurses station to rest his feet when Monica, Jennifer,  _ and _ Whitney walk up together and tell him his presence is needed.

“I just sat down,” he moans. “There’s vomit in my shoe, probably.”

They do not listen. He’s not sure he actually expected them to, considering they’re nurses, but it was worth an attempt.

He’s hustled into an empty room, except it’s not empty, and there’s Nyota, in a sky blue dress that makes her skin look fantastic and also shows a lot of leg. 

“Hey,” he says, and refrains from kissing her hello, vomit in consideration. “You look fantastic. There’s a stomach flu thing happening today, though. There’s also vomit in my shoe. I probably shouldn’t kiss you.”

Nyota doesn’t say a thing, but there’s something in her hand and she is- okay, she’s getting down on one knee.

“Nyota,” Leonard says. “What are you doing?”

“I’m proposing, Leonard,” she replies calmly. “Now shut up.”

He shuts up.

“I don’t have some long or fancy speech,” she starts, her shoulders back and her head held high. “I’ll soon be able to offer you a NASA salary and a home somewhere south of here, but all I really care about is spending the rest of my life with you. You already have my heart, Len, but I want to wake up next to you every morning. You made it through grad school with me, so I’m pretty sure we’ll make a good team out there. Will you marry me?”

Leonard clapped his hand over his mouth two seconds in, but he manages to nod. He’s kind of choked up and can’t really talk, but Nyota knows him well enough and pulls him into a hug without a care for the puke probably involved in the equation.

He’s definitely crying a little, and his back hurts from bending over to hug his  _ fiancée _ properly, but he makes it a minute before pulling away to see the ring. She got him a ring. Like a nice one, with an inset diamond and something engraved on the inside, which she tells him is Swahili for love. 

“I love it,” he says, and slides it on, not giving a single shit about anything anyone is going to say ever. The two years he’s spent with her have been better than pretty much any of the previous years of his life, and he’s not about to stop now. “I love you,” he says, and kisses her long enough that he’s thinking about asking his coworkers to cover for him the rest of his shift.

He doesn’t, though, because he doesn’t hate them enough to leave them a man down in the face of all the vomit. 

Leonard tells her later that he’s never going to forgive her for proposing with actual vomit in his shoe. “My sock  _ squelched _ all day _ , _ Nyota,” he whines, and buries his face in her shoulder.

She cards her fingers through his hair and tells him to hush. “I planned everything out weeks ago. It wasn’t like I was going to stop for children with the stomach flu.”

“I love you so much,” he mumbles, his voice distorted slightly by her nightgown and skin. “I love you so fucking much, Nyota.”

“I love you too,” she says, in that tone of voice that means he’s going to get very thoroughly worked over tonight, all parties willing. He is so willing. Like, actively saying yes with every atom of his body.

“Yes,” he says, and rolls over to yank off his shirt.

She’s smiling so wide he can see half her teeth when she kisses him. “Okay, future husband.”

Yeah, he’s getting laid tonight. He’s engaged to the most wonderful woman he’s ever met, she has a  _ motorcycle, _ and they’re getting  _ married. _

*

Leonard can’t stop grinning. He gets that it’s weird and everything, but he physically can’t wipe the smile off his face. He literally tells everyone who will listen that he’s getting married. The kids are happy and think it’s cute, and his coworkers, after offering their congratulations, are standing back and shaking their heads.

Whatever. He’s met the actual love of his life, and they are literally going to ride their motorcycles into the sunset together. 

His parents raise their eyebrows when Leonard shows them the ring and say something he mostly ignores about traditionalism and doesn’t Nyota have a ring too?

“She just wants a wedding band,” he says. “I’m not mad about her proposing before I got to it.”

Leonard’s dad looks at him through the shitty Skype connection, his head tilted a little to the side. “Is she good to you?”

They’d talked, Leonard and his dad, when Joss filed for divorce. His parents know that Joss wasn’t good to him, not in any way that mattered. There had been some bullshit about being a man at first, but when Leonard had cried at his parents’ kitchen table, that quickly disappeared. His mom actually threatened to blackball Joss from the town by the end of that whole situation. Leonard almost took her up on it, then decided she was going to bite herself in the ass plenty and he was content to focus on improving his own life.

“Yes,” he says, unable to help the smile on his face. He ducks his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”

“Good,” his dad says. 

“So when’s the wedding?” His mom asks.

“We were thinking this winter. Nyota apparently has been doing venue research already, because she’s on top of everything. The list is around here somewhere,” he says.

Nyota produces it after several minutes of fruitless searching, and then she sits down to say hello to his parents. They talked to her parents on the phone the other night. Her mom expressed no surprise that she was the one to propose, and her father had just smiled a little and asked to see the ring.

Leonard doesn’t know exactly how perfect his life with Nyota is going to be (probably not perfect at all), but he does know that she has already made him happier in the last couple of years than he has ever been in his entire life. That’s the important thing.

It goes like this:

They get married right before they move to the South Bay, and both of them cry a lot during the wedding. Gaila claims she’s completely responsible for pushing them together in her toast, and Leonard’s mom says some embarrassing stuff that’s actually kind of sweet.

Leonard is just happy they’re married, even if his cousin decides to get blackout drunk and attempts to get with Nyota’s sister- who’s very married and uninterested.

They finally manage to escape the reception, a little before midnight. They drive off on Nyota’s motorcycle. Even though they’re just going back to their apartment, they’re going to do it in style. A guy at a stoplight shouts “Congratulations, man” at them, and Leonard grins and holds his wife’s waist a little tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> The one thing I _did_ do research on? Making sure the SF In-N-Out location existed in the early 2000s. I was pretty sure it did, but I’m not here to disrespect In-N-Out and I had to double check. 
> 
> Also, this was supposed to cap off the trilogy, except there’s for sure an actual sequel to Minivans that I want to write. It probably won’t be another year and a half before it’s written, and it’s not going to be mega long. However, I make zero promises, especially since I’ve got a 110k+ monster (not Star Trek) that’s been taking most of my writing energy this year and shows no signs of being done anytime soon. (Gaila will be appearing in the sequel, and her lack of appearance in Minivans may or may not be explained. That’s all you’re getting for now.)
> 
> Thank you for reading! I appreciate comments a lot, no matter how long or short, and I'm also on tumblr over [here](https://karikes.tumblr.com/).


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